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Despite the disbandment of Revolution Afrique, this collective endeavor appears to have been a unique political education experience for African activists, transcending distinct social and national boundaries.
In the age of the Internet, transnational activism is globalizing on the web, as we have seen with the creation of the NGO Urgence Panafricaine of the French activist of African origin Kemi Seba, who carried out actions against the servitude of the monetary system of the former French colonies in Africa, which remain enslaved in a Nazi monetary system that strangles any attempt at social progress and emancipation, of the majority of French-speaking African countries under the CFA franc. Transnational activism, has also been illustrated in the arrest and deportation to The Hague of Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo. During nearly 10 years of a long trial at the International Criminal Court, the ardor of supporters from all sides has not weakened. Ditto for the global demonstrations against the restrictive and liberticidal measures of governments of the northern hemisphere in the face of the COVID19 pandemic.
However, transnational and cybernetic activism, has a cunny opponent, the global capitalist autocracy, which uses, the means of surveillance technology, and economic strangulation. The mercantile interests of multinationals which since control through their material means the politicians and the electoral game in the West, team up with the national autocracies in the south, internationalizing a cartel of fear which represses transnational cyber activists. This trend has been seen in the cooperation of google with the Chinese government to track cyber activity of potential opponents, and by Facebook cooperation with the French government to build a framework that aimed to control freedom of speech online under the guise of community standard rules.
In an article published in August 2020 titled Global Autocracies: Strategies of Transnational Repression, Legitimation and Cooptation in Global Politics, Gerasimos Tsourapas Professor at the University of Birmingham explains:
“How, when and why does a state take repressive measures against individuals residing outside the jurisdiction of its territory? Beyond the forms of national control exercised by a state over citizens living within its legal borders, autocracies also seek to target those who are abroad, whether it is support by the African states of violence against dissidents in exile, extraditions of political emigrants by Central Asian republics, the adoption of spyware to monitor digital activism in Latin America, or even forced disappearances of expatriates from East Asia.
Gerasimos Tsourapas argues that the increase in global migratory flows has contributed to the emergence of "transnational authoritarianism", as autocracies aim both to maximize the material gains resulting from the "exit" of citizens and to minimize political risks by controlling their "voice" abroad.
He explains how governments develop strategies of transnational repression, legitimation and co-optation that transcend state borders, as well as a mafia style cooperation with a variety of non-state actors.
However, it emerges from this study that the law of double standards is the paradigm in force, the good crises which shed light on the transnational terrorism of enemy or rival states like China or Russia, are often exploited by the West, as a lever to achieve targeted objectives.
Also the proven or fictitious assassination attempts of the Russian or Chinese intelligence services against dissidents in exile are widely publicized to demonize these political opponents on the world stage, while the assassination inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who had emigrated to the United States, if its illustrated the brutal patter of the Saudi regime; it has only received a lackluster condemnation from the Western authorities, because they are in business with Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest oil producers in the world, which they also consider as an ally in the Middle East, and logically the West considers that launching a media campaign exposing the crimes of one of its political allies will weaken its camp
Similarly, Rwanda, despite the serious attacks by agents of the Paul Kagame regime against Rwandan dissidents in exile, continues to remain a privileged interlocutor in the great lakes, where the great robbery of Congo's riches continues to kill thousands of people every year. It is estimated that since the late 1990s conflicts in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have claimed more than 6 million lives.
In the same logic, it is intentionally that few Western media reported the extradition by Kuwait of eight migrants belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood (religious and political group), to Egypt in July 2019, where they await long sentences. Likewise, eyebrows were not raised in the West when the former member of the Azerbaijani parliament Hüseyn Abdullayev, a member of the opposition campaign "Let us not be silent", was arrested by the Turkish authorities in April 2018 and extradited to Baku. - despite the fact that Germany had granted him political asylum a few years earlier.
Lerone Pieters